Classic's platter-based hard drive and Shuffle's lack of a screen are just two possible reasons for discontinuing the products

Apple's
iPod has been around just over a decade now, with the current lineup consisting
of the iPod Shuffle, iPod nano, iPod Classic and iPod touch. But according to TUAW, two of the
aforementioned portable media players are getting the old heave-ho this year.

If you've been thinking about picking up an iPod Nano or iPod Classic anytime
soon, the time is now -- both media players are seeing their last days as sale
items at Apple.

According to TUAW, there are plenty of reasons for Apple to make
this move. For starters, Apple announced earlier this year that iPod sales were falling short of expectations. The
iPod Classic hasn't changed much over the years and doesn't offer anything that
the iPod touch doesn't offer. Also, it uses a platter-based hard drive, and
Apple is mainly switching to flash-based memory.

As for the iPod Shuffle, its lack of a screen has been an issue since day one.

With the Classic and the Shuffle out of the picture, Apple will only have
touchscreen iPods available with the iPod
nano becoming its new low-end media player.

Apple has not confirmed this discontinuation, but TUAW received
the word from an anonymous source.

Comments

Threshold

Username

Password

remember me

This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled

I don't understand how a $500 tablet suddenly became "overpriced". People couldn't believe it when the iPad was announced at $500, everyone was expecting a tablet to be $1000 based on the price of them up until that point. Then there's the fact that other 10" tablets cost roughly the same amount or more, just look at the Xoom which launched at $800 with much lower specs, and they still won't compete on internal specs until the Tegra 3 launches.

I won't argue that a $250 mp3 player with hard drive platters is a concept that is ready to die though. Some people here seem to like all the storage space they offer, but I don't care for the seek times on physical platters compared to what you get with flash memory. Downgrading to a 16GB flash based mp3 player which also costs less makes sense to me given that you're losing moving parts, gaining battery life, and improving seek time performance. How much music does one need to carry?

But again, I think dedicated PMPs are on life support, but that's just me. A couple years and most people won't have dedicated music players, they'll also be phones or things like iPod Touches.